THE SECOND STAGE.
“It was with me, and the malice which before was torpid under a sullen
exterior, was now active. It was perfectly unchanged in every other
respect. This new energy was apparent in its activity and its looks, and
soon in other ways.
“For a time, you will understand, the change was shown only in an
increased vivacity, and an air of menace, as if it was always brooding
over some atrocious plan. Its eyes, as before, were never off me.”
“Is it here now?” I asked.
“No,” he replied, “it has been absent exactly a fortnight and a
day—fifteen days. It has sometimes been away so long as nearly two
months, once for three. Its absence always exceeds a fortnight, although
it may be but by a single day. Fifteen days having past since I saw it
last, it may return now at any moment.”
“Is its return,” I asked, “accompanied by any peculiar manifestation?”
“Nothing—no,” he said. “It is simply with me again. On lifting my eyes
from a book, or turning my head, I see it as usual, looking at me, and
then it remains, as before, for its appointed time. I have never told so
much and so minutely before to any one.”
I perceived that he was agitated, and looking like death, and he
repeatedly applied his handkerchief to his forehead; I suggested that he
might be tired, and told him that I would call, with pleasure, in the
morning, but he said:
“No, if you don’t mind hearing it all now. I have got so far, and I
should prefer making one effort of it. When I spoke to Dr. Harley, I had
nothing like so much to tell. You are a philosophic physician. You give
spirit its proper rank. If this thing is real—”
He paused, looking at me with agitated inquiry.
“We can discuss it by-and-by, and very fully. I will give you all I
think,” I answered, after an interval.
“Well—very well. If it is anything real, I say, it is prevailing,
little by little, and drawing me more interiorly into hell. Optic
nerves, he talked of. Ah! well—there are other nerves of communication.
May God Almighty help me! You shall hear.
“Its power of action, I tell you, had increased. Its malice became, in a
way aggressive. About two years ago, some questions that were pending
between me and the bishop having been settled, I went down to my parish
in Warwickshire, anxious to find occupation in my profession. I was not
prepared for what happened, although I have since thought I might have
apprehended something like it. The reason of my saying so, is this—”
He was beginning to speak with a great deal more effort and reluctance,
and sighed often, and seemed at times nearly overcome. But at this time
his manner was not agitated. It was more like that of a sinking patient,
who has given himself up.
“Yes, but I will first tell you about Kenlis, my parish.
“It was with me when I left this place for Dawlbridge. It was my silent
travelling companion, and it remained with me at the vicarage. When I
entered on the discharge of my duties, another change took place. The
thing exhibited an atrocious determination to thwart me. It was with me
in the church—in the reading-desk—in the pulpit—within the communion
rails. At last, it reached this extremity, that while I was reading to
the congregation, it would spring upon the open book and squat there, so
that I was unable to see the page. This happened more than once.
“I left Dawlbridge for a time. I placed myself in Dr. Harley’s hands. I
did everything he told me. He gave my case a great deal of thought. It
interested him, I think. He seemed successful. For nearly three months I
was perfectly free from a return. I began to think I was safe. With his
full assent I returned to Dawlbridge.
“I travelled in a chaise. I was in good spirits. I was more—I was happy
and grateful. I was returning, as I thought delivered from a dreadful
hallucination, to the scene of duties which I longed to enter upon. It
was a beautiful sunny evening, everything looked serene and cheerful,
and I was delighted. I remember looking out of the window to see the
spire of my church at Kenlis among the trees, at the point where one has
the earliest view of it. It is exactly where the little stream that
bounds the parish passes under the road by a culvert, and where it
emerges at the road-side, a stone with an old inscription is placed. As
we passed this point, I drew my head in and sat down, and in the corner
of the chaise was the monkey.
“For a moment I felt faint, and then quite wild with despair and horror.
I called to the driver, and got out, and sat down at the road-side, and
prayed to God silently for mercy. A despairing resignation supervened.
My companion was with me as I re-entered the vicarage. The same
persecution followed. After a short struggle I submitted, and soon I
left the place.
“I told you,” he said, “that the beast has before this become in certain
ways aggressive. I will explain a little. It seemed to be actuated by
intense and increasing fury, whenever I said my prayers, or even
meditated prayer. It amounted at last to a dreadful interruption. You
will ask, how could a silent immaterial phantom effect that? It was
thus, whenever I meditated praying; it was always before me, and nearer
and nearer.
“It used to spring on a table, on the back of a chair, on the
chimney-piece, and slowly to swing itself from side to side, looking at
me all the time. There is in its motion an indefinable power to
dissipate thought, and to contract one’s attention to that monotony,
till the ideas shrink, as it were, to a point, and at last to
nothing—and unless I had started up, and shook off the catalepsy I
have felt as if my mind were on the point of losing itself. There are
other ways,” he sighed heavily; “thus, for instance, while I pray with
my eyes closed, it comes closer and closer, and I see it. I know it is
not to be accounted for physically, but I do actually see it, though my
lids are closed, and so it rocks my mind, as it were, and overpowers me,
and I am obliged to rise from my knees. If you had ever yourself known
this, you would be acquainted with desperation.”